Looking for a side dish to wow them at your next picnic? Something you can make today and eat all week? When I hear “Mom, can you make your rice salad again?” I know I have a good thing going.

Get a nice big bowl — so that you can put in all your ingredients and toss them around.

Cook up and cool to room temperature 1 cup of rainbow quinoa (“keen wah”) Ratio: 1 cup of dried quinoa to 2 cups water. Bring to a boil then simmer for 15 minutes and shut it off until the water is absorbed. Or, you can do it in your microwave. 5 minutes on high and 15 on medium power. Done.

Cook 2 cups of jasmine rice – which expands to about 4 cooked — and let it come to room temperature. (I have a rice cooker — best investment I ever made.)

While they are cooking — finely chop 3-4 carrots, 3-4 celery stalks — I use The Pampered Chef food chopper to get tiny pieces — so you wind up with about 1 cup chopped of each.

Add a cup of each of the following to a bowl:

– dried cranberries
– golden raisins
– chopped walnuts

Put it all in a the big bowl.

In a separate bowl mix up a vinaigrette of your choice. I used a black cherry balsamic vinegar (about 1/3 cup), a little maple syrup (3 tablespoons?) and 1/2 cup of good extra virgin olive oil. Add a pinch or three of salt. Mix it up ‘good’.

Pour the vinaigrette over the rice/quinoa/veggie/dried fruit/nut mix. Carefully toss to coat everything. Taste. Season as you wish with more salt or make more vinaigrette.

As good as this is the first day, if you let it sit overnight in the fridge, it’s even better the next day!!!

BTW…

The other one people seem to like is my riff on the basic Fiesta Salad.

Me? I added shrimp and chicken sausage (lime chipotle) and tossed it with a lime based vinaigrette and top it off with shredded cilantro. (I use my Pampered Chef salad scissors to cut those leaves up in a jiffy.)

BTW, I call this “magic” salad because just about everyone I know “magically” likes this and asks for the recipe. So there it is! If you make this, tell me how you “riffed” on it yourself.